Redial the Gate: Past and Present

[fignewton]

redial_the_gate is now up to Past and Present. sidlj's recap is up at the comm, and it looks like we'll have some good discussions there.

I'm due to post some Kira-Linea meta on the comm on Thursday, but in the meantime, I want someone to handwave one thing for me, please: How in the world could Sam (not Daniel-the-linguist!) read Linea's diary? Are we expected to believe that Linea wrote her private thoughts in English?

ETA, because some people were confused:

No, really. Plain, handwritten English!




::listens to chirping crickets::

Comments

[ultranos-fic.livejournal.com]

Maybe Linea didn't write in a different language, but possibly in English (or whatever other language Sam might happen to know), but also used cryptography on her journal.

I can believe Sam, of all people, could crack a crypto puzzle. And that Daniel might not be able to.

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

Maybe Linnea has really, really bad handwriting and Sam's just better at deciphering that sort of thing than Daniel.

But wait (I'm glancing at the transcript), was it that Sam read something that Daniel couldn't? Or did she just find something that no one had come across yet? From a scientific standpoint, it would make sense that Sam would be the one studying the journal since presumably she'd have a better understanding of the scientific principles than anyone else.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

I've added a screenshot. Plain, ordinary English.

I like your version better. :)

[ultranos-fic.livejournal.com]

Okay, yeah. I forgot that shot. Um...I got nothin'.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Your theories are intriguing, but sadly, it's just pedestrian handwriting in regular English. Even without squinting, I can read "my own space" and several other individual words.

Sam finds the diary hidden behind other books, but it's just a personal diary - nothing scientific or difficult to read about it.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Magnets!

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

Ah, but maybe the people on Kera's world COULDN'T read English, and thus her diary would be secret to THEM.

*nods wisely*

[6beforelunch.livejournal.com]

Ooo, good one.

Yes! Linea is super smart and she picked up English in the short time she was on Earth. Then, when her memory was wiped, the knowledge of the language remained. So she wrote in English and didn't even think it was strange because she had no reason to think it was strange. *nods*

[pepper-field.livejournal.com]

I like that handwave!

[night-spear1287.livejournal.com]

She accessed Sam's computers just fine. So either they teach English and the Roman alphabet and/or C# (or whatever it is they use to program on the show) on her home planet, or she just learns really fast. After all, it only took a minute or so for her to learn to represent the 'basics' according to our representation of molecular structures (even if her little drawing of the molecule made...strange sense). I'm guessing she learns really, really fast.

Also, she spoke English already when they first saw her in the prison, just like everyone else in the universe. If she can learn to speak a language that she had no real excuse to know, she might as well write it, too :)

[magnavox-23.livejournal.com]

Sam has a diary reading fetish. :P

[magnavox-23.livejournal.com]

But wouldn't she have written all that stuff before she lost her memory? She was still evil and carrying out experiments on those 2 old folks was she not?

I like the idea that she wrote in English to keep her work secret from the people on the planet. :)

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's a super advanced diary that is designed to convey her thoughts to anyone that picks it up. It translates to the language of the reader and displays the content on what appears to be ordinary paper. My, that is advanced! Just not very private... ; )

[sg-wonderland.livejournal.com]

Yeah, 'cause wasn't she the one reading Daniel's diaries in 'Fire and Water'? As for the English writing thing, I got nuthin' on that either.

[sg-wonderland.livejournal.com]

Oooh, like those books Wesley had in 'Angel'? There wasn't anything printed on the pages until he told the book what book he was looking for and then it appeared like...magic! That's what it was, magic...

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

Lol! I'd forgotten about that! Yes, just like that, only all sciencey... (Should I have dropped that last 'e'? It's so hard to know with made up words...)

[redbyrd-sgfic.livejournal.com]

My theory is that most of the offworld stuff is actually happening in a sort of galactic lingua franca that pretty much everyone in the SGC has picked up. It's represented as English for the convenience of the TV audience. It's only when the aliens speak some other (more difficult to learn) language (like Goa'uld) that it's spoken as a 'foreign' language on the show.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

::sporfles::

Oh, yes, it all makes sense now!

We will NOT address why Linea would be writing in English in the first place, then... ;)

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

As Magnavox points out, she wrote it before her lost her memory. OTOH, yes, the woman is brilliant, and she knew enough English to program the computer to type out "all debts are finally paid" or whatever the exact phrasing is. But I'm still having trouble connecting that to handwritten script. The threshold of disbelief only stretches so far before it collapses!

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're right that she had no trouble working the SGC's computers. Which really goes to show that Linea was seriously brilliant.

If she can learn to speak a language that she had no real excuse to know, she might as well write it, too :)

Hee hee! I still can't wrap my head around the idea of her handwriting being exactly like ours, though.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Bwah! It all makes sense now!

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Good point! But to be fair, in both cases, it was presumed the person who wrote the diary was dead. Come to think of it, Jonas also spent a lot of time reading the diaries/journals of someone who wasn't quite dead yet. Perhaps it's an SG-1 thing - if someone's reading someone else's private writings, it means they're really alive! :)

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Considering the way that diary looks, it's a remarkably disguised piece of technology, then. ;)

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know you have that theory that SG teams learn the offworld lingo. And I'm okay with that. But it's a very big leap to go from "pretend they're all speaking in foreign" to "pretend that someone from offworld will use handwriting script exactly like 20th century North America and that Sam will be able to read it easily." :)

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed! That's what makes it so super dooper advanced! Stealth technology!!

[redbyrd-sgfic.livejournal.com]

pretend that someone from offworld will use handwriting script exactly like 20th century North America and that Sam will be able to read it easily

Yeah, that's because it's *stupid*. And one more example of sloppy writers who either a)don't know what they're doing or b)don't respect their audience.

To make it work at all, I have to pretend that the diary is *written* in foreign, in a script that Sam can read (which she has mastered in between figuring out Goa'uld tech and fighting off Jaffa in her copious free time...la, la, la...)...I didn't say it was a *good* theory. I'd be thrilled to find out there's a way to fanwank this and make it work, but I really don't think there is one.

I suppose if you subscribe to the Stargate-as-universal-translator thing, you could say that very occasionally the traveler gets the understanding of the written language as well as the spoken, so Sam sees the diary as English even though it's really in whatever Kera's native language is.

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

Oh she learned that the same time and in the same manner that she learned to completely hack the SGC's mainframe after only seeing a computer for five minutes. ;-)

Probably magnets were involved.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Magnets are ALWAYS involved.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Sam sees the diary as English even though it's really in whatever Kera's native language is.

Since we haven't stepped through the Gate, what's our excuse?

Kidding. I do wish sometimes, though, that the props/writer folk would put a little more thought into things.

[redbyrd-sgfic.livejournal.com]

Oh, hey, it's science *fiction*, right? That means the rules don't apply to them. Internal consistency is irrelevant. Common sense doesn't apply. */sarcasm*.

Yeah, a little more thought would be good...

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

That's what fanfic writers like you are for, anyway. :)